My post was not a fiery indictment of framework, more that I am musing that perhaps I have been duped. Not because they aren't repairable (they are), but because I didn't consider that the quality would be so much lower than other options.

I genuinely don't know which is cheaper or better for the environment: buying a macbook that I change out every 8-10 years (this is how long they would last, based on prior experience), or I buy a framework and change out parts as they fail.

I think this is absolutely what you sell to investors. For it to be attractive to consumers though (and thus attractive to investors, since people actually need to buy the thing), there has to be a balance. They haven't even managed to conjure up a market for third party expansion cards, which feels like the lowest of hanging fruit.

At the moment they are living on borrowed time and good will from the tech / hippie community who want to be more sustainable and customizable. I think they have likely lost me at this point. I don't know how close they are to losing everybody else.

I somewhat regret buying my framework laptop at this stage, because the answer to every fault is "buy a new component, from framework".

I'm not sure I blame them for this really, but there is no competitive market of parts (or really any market at all), which means that the reality is that you're just locking your money to them. They also often have stock issues, so woe betide you if your component fails at the wrong time.

It's very hard to predict costs here, but framework laptops do seem to fail more than other brands, and their laptops do tend to be more expensive. In comparison to MacBooks I've used over the years, which other than screen delaminating, have been faultless, at least.

Isn't that the point here? That everyone thinks massive disruption is happening and everyone is 100xing their productivity, but it's not actually showing up in the numbers anywhere?

That's not really the point of the topic though right, it's that in the UK I have the choice of a billion different ISPs, including (I think stupidly) three different fibre providers (I literally have two fibre connections to my house because I changed ISPs and they ran on different fibre networks), and in the US all I hear about is streamers complaining that they are all stuck with the same shitty ISP as there is no choice, in a country that supposedly champions choice.

Very odd, but perhaps more familiar to graphics programmers? I will say I'd probably call it a stall, which is exactly what the Vulkan docs call it moments later, so :shrug:

Yes you can buy games on GoG or Epic and play them on a steam deck or a steam machine. But it's juuuuust enough faff to be annoying enough, that you'd rather just get them on steam. I know people (and am a person) who have rebought games they already own so they are on steam, to make playing between steam deck and desktop more reliable.

It's the same with the steam controller. You _can_ use it with games outside of steam, but it's enough of a faff that you find yourself avoiding it.

It's incredibly effective, and why they are an effective monopoly in PC gaming.

Also, as a foreigner who lives over there, I think they are... sad? I'm surprised they got a positive reception from your coworkers. For me they are a backup and a failure to do something more interesting.

I don't know why they think this, but no? Perhaps it's badly expressed, but LLMs cut corners all the time. It's sort of their core fault really.

Anyway, I disagree with the core premise[1]. Re-writes are not cheap, because 1) code can be so bad it's unclear how to rewrite it[2], b) code can be so significant it's challenging to rewrite it (architectural choices, schemas, etc), and lastly if you're ever wanting to own your own code and not rent it from LLM companies, having it understandable by a human is still a goal worth working toward.

[1] To be fair, I think OP _might_ be talking about rewriting in the moment of the thing being built, but with some unspoken rule that once they think the change is good enough, then they are reviewing all the code? They don't make it clear..

[2] it's not even that hard. Write a test that exercises an end result and not the rule that causes that end result and 6 months later you've forgotten why the code is like that. I had to maintain a piece of software once where the primary form of tests were a bunch of snapshots of an end report being generated, based on some initial data input, mostly all unlabeled. The code was like "do this SQL query on table A and then take the second result". Why the second result? Your guess is as good as mine! I couldn't even work out why they were querying table A and not table B...

I think the issue is those repos being based on Arch though, not Arch itself.

In my experience using the AUR:

1. when you first install the package you can read the build script (and you should). These are in a very standard structure, and if the one you are reading is weird and complicated consider not installing it. No one is forcing you to. Almost every build script I read just downloads a build from a tagged github release.

2. when you get an upgrade you are shown the diff. For almost every AUR package I use this is literally just changing the $VERSION variable and the subsequent $HASH of the download. It is trivial to see if anything (in the AUR script) is happening that is sneaky.

It's really not that scary. And if it's considered scary, there are literally dozens of other linux distros (not to mention Windows or MacOS) you could be using instead.

Perhaps we are defining "job" differently? AI can, with much coaching, _perhaps_[1], do some _aspects_ of a programmer's job. But not all of it, or even the most important parts of it.

[1] given that we have spent the past many decades pointing out that developer productivity is possibly impossible to measure, or at least very hard; given "done" vs "done done"; given the history of "rock star" developers creating messes behind them, the difference between short and long term thinking and the external imperceptability of that difference; given all of that, we haven't really had enough time to form a valid opinion on what AI can do, in the long run.

I don't think it makes sense the assume the US considers any country its ally.

Maybe we run in different circles. Or did, anyway.